THE FRANKFURT GATE for Singapore Airlines was an odd mix of manufactured German rathskeller stuck in a cold corridor of terrazzo marble and uninspired mall from 1974. There was access to a first-class lounge, but Stag decided to pass. No point in meeting up with the crowd early, he reckoned, ironically. Things were going to get awkward soon enough.
In the meantime, he was on the internet with a new device in Maguire’s name. Dedman’s documents and devices were safe in his carry-on. He had just started to read about Jan Vanderloos, President of Tarnhelm South Africa, who had been struck by a debilitating stroke, when Suites Class seating was announced. The Airbus 380 was the largest aircraft commercially available. It had twelve single suites that could convert to six doubles, and he was pretty confident Tarnhelm had booked all of them. They sure as fuck didn’t want an audience.
He was the first to board. The suites were like individual cubicles that each had an adjoining wall to another. The wall could come down and create a double bed when it was time for sleeping. Individual privacy was maximum, which he was happy to have. He didn’t relish spending the next few hours staring at a bunch of men who wanted to kill him. No, he was going to take the meeting, outline his plan to them, then try to relax in that viper’s nest, in his double bed in the sky.
Make that a double bed in the sky with Givenchy pajamas.
The attendant was quick to bring him a Blue Mountain coffee. He’d read it went for about $120.00 a pound, and he longed to taste it. But he didn’t dare. Not when Tarnhelm had a target on his forehead. So he stirred it with a spoon and ruefully thought about the life that awaited him when his money was gone and he was back to flying economy. If he lived that long. He was watching the coffee cool when the first of the board members arrived in the suite forward to his.
He figured the tall Norseman was Rikhardsson. The guy looked at him like the bloodthirsty pagan he was, all ice-blue stare and heartless beheading. His attendant took his carry-on and swished by in her Balmain-designed batik uniform. Stag had read that the Singapore Girl was required to have a certain waist-to-hip ratio. It was, of course, completely sexist and unacceptable, until you were watching them bend and stretch, their ass in your face. Then, for a man, it was heaven.
“Mr. Maguire? Henry Sadler. President of North American Operations.” A nondescript American shoved his hand in and pumped his. “Mr. Portier will be here shortly.”
Stag said nothing. From the shuffling and obsequious murmurs behind him, he figured the other board members were getting settled.
Portier arrived looking like Marie Antoinette being forced to tour the slums near the Paris sewers. He handed his alligator briefcase to his personal airline attendant—Stag thought her name was Nor—who took it and placed it elegantly under the bench in front of his seat. For one second, Portier met his eye across the aisle. It said, “I am going to eat your face off,” then he took a glass of Krug and settled back for takeoff.
The Airbus rose from the tarmac like a floating tanker, with hardly a bump. Once the captain lifted the seat belt sign, Stag figured he would get started. It wouldn’t take long.
He went to the first-class lounge at the front of the plane, nodding to Portier to follow. The rest of the board stood and sauntered in. Once the five of them settled in the hip, boxy, white leather lounge seats, Stag whipped out a manila folder and handed it to Portier. Portier opened it and examined the key, which, for the occasion, Stag had slipped in a new Ziploc bag.
“I can’t afford fancy Hermès briefcases … yet,” Stag added with drummed-up humility.
The men each took a long look at the folded silk strip through the Ziploc. The last one to examine it, Rikhardsson, placed it in the manila folder and handed it back to Stag.
Stag sat back. “I just read about Mr. Vanderloos. He seemed young for a stroke. I understand he’s in a permanent vegetative state. Very unfortunate. I would have liked for him to be here.” It was all he could do not to roll his eyes. He handed Portier an envelope that held his request. It was simple. Fifty million in the numbered account in the Zurich Cantonal Bank, half when they landed, the other half when they received the key. Swiss-numbered accounts weren’t what they used to be now that the Holocaust lawyers and US Homeland Security was onto them, but that didn’t bother Stag. Especially since there would be no one to complain.
Portier read his demands in stony silence. He motioned for Rikhardsson to take the contents around to the other board members.
Then he said to Stag, “Mr. Maguire, what makes you think you’ll be able to get away with this?”
“Well, I figure at the rate your board is going, all I have to do is wait, and you’ll cannibalize yourselves.” Stag looked at the glass of sparkling spring water that Rikhardsson had just sipped from. It was clearly a nice safe glass of water. He took it from the cocktail table and chugged it down himself, much to Rikhardsson’s shock. “Besides, you’re here, aren’t you?”
He didn’t bother to wait around for an answer. Instead, he rose and gimped to his suite. Now all there was left to do was refuse all meals, get tucked into his double bed, and lie awake till they landed at Changi Airport. Without fearing for his life, it was just an endurance test. Like flying economy.
You’ve become quite secretive about the new weapon. You talk of the future, that one day there shall be a great bomb affixed to a rocket that will destroy an entire city in one blast. I don’t really believe it. Especially when you claim it will be but the size of a pineapple, but I listen with intent even as I look dreamy and distracted at my easel. You murmured the bomb is not yet launchable, but you boast it may be dropped from a plane. You drink as you speak to me of these things. Sometimes, I am not certain what your slurred words are saying. But I write it down as best I can on my white silk. I go to the paint store, and hand it over.
It is my little hammer, you see, knocking away at the bricks of the Thousand-Year-Reich.
Changi Airport was the most beautiful airport Stag had ever seen, from its celestial architecture to its ridiculous number of high-end shops. But walking through it to catch his flight to Bali, he noted the strange inefficiency of the Singaporeans. Everything was beautiful to the eye, but once you went to your gate, you couldn’t get a pedestrian bottle of water without walking a mile back to where the shops had been hubbed. And the internet, forget about it. To get the code, you had to go back through security. But, fuck, you could buy some Ferragamos in a heartbeat.
He passed briefly through the Singapore Airlines SilverKris lounge to send out an email. For the second meeting with Tarnhelm, he decided he needed a more appropriate accoutrement instead of a Ziploc bag. He emailed several photos and specifications to Wuhan, China, where he’d sourced a high-end fake leather goods operation. They were rushing through a “fine” alligator briefcase, just exactly like the one Portier owned. Only he wasn’t going to pay Hermès to make it.
He smiled, thinking how pissed off Portier was going to be seeing another Hermès briefcase like his own. For a moment, he even considered getting a fake Tourbillon Mars made in China and wearing it at their next meeting, just to get the guy’s goat.
Nah.
His work done, he thought about staying in the first-class lounge, but after his last flight, he was getting tired of staring at douchebags. And sometimes he just wanted to blend with the crowd. Now was such a time. Portier was sure to let him live a few more minutes till they made a deal.
Or not.
He settled into the plane that would take him to Denpasar. He was booked at the St. Regis under his name, but Dedman was at a small upscale hotel called Bali Orchid. He had a nice over-the-water palm-woven villa waiting for him there. He hoped he had enough time to enjoy it and get some research done
Portier took his own private plane back to Zurich. The rest of the board flew with him.
“Fifty million.” Zellner shook his head. “Tell me again why we don’t just shoot him out of the air—collateral damage aside?”
“He’s fucking with us,” Rikhardsson bit out from a blond leather couch.
“Yes,” Portier agreed. “But until we have that code, we cannot see him dead.” He was determined not to be driven by the rage of his white count. There was too much he still wanted to get done. It was time for ice in his veins as Rikhardsson had handsomely mastered.
The phone rang and he answered it.
The three other men, Sadler, Rikhardsson, and Zellner, all waited, stilled in anticipation.
“Are you sure? The photographs were clear?” Portier listened. Quietly he put down the phone.
“Well?” Sadler asked.
“Our photos sent back from our body cams were crystal clear. The key which Maguire presented us is real.” Portier again swallowed an unaccustomed rage. “The first line only, however. The rest is gibberish.”
“Jesus Christ,” Zellner burst out.
Portier wasted no time. “Maguire most definitely has the key to the diary. But what he showed us on the airplane was not THE key. It was a dupe meant to fool us into the action we’ve just taken. To see if he has it. To confirm it, then to pay him for the real one.”
Zellner ran his hand down his face.
“Let’s just get him to talk. Waterboard him. What are we wasting time for?” Rikhardsson demanded.
“No,” Sadler interjected. “We bring him in with force and the letters go out. Then the game is lost.”
“I have others on this.” Portier ended it there. “Let’s see what they can find.”
“Of course.” Rikhardsson fell into silence, unusual for him to be mute and impotent.
Sadler checked his phone. His private plane was waiting in Zurich. Until that bomb was found, he planned on spending as much time safely in the US as possible.
“We can always pay him,” Zellner muttered.
“Yes. Perhaps we will have to retrieve it that way. Nothing must be ruled out,” Portier said.
“Nothing?” Sadler asked, more derision in his voice than he meant to reveal.
Portier stared at him, and thought of those blood tests waiting for him back on his desk, and Sadler’s long trip back to his compound in Potomac, Maryland. “No. Nothing,” he added, realizing for the first time what a virtue patience really was.